Blue Prince Review
Blue Prince is frustratingly good. The combination of rougelite and puzzle make for a game that's simple on the surface but is built on layer after layer of discovery. The game had me reaching for a notebook to jot down the game’s various secrets slowly working through the game’s hidden story.
I'll avoid talking too much about story here so there aren't any spoilers. I do talk about game mechanics but all of that should already be revealed to anyone who's watched a trailer.
The rougelite loop is pretty simple. You’re in a house and each time you open a door you choose from a set of rooms to built out the floor plan. You move through the rooms of the house solving puzzles and collecting items until you run out of options. Then the day restarts and you do it again.
The high level goal of the game is to find the houses 46th room. Initially that’s all you know so the first few hours of my play through were mostly spent learning about each of the various rooms. Some have shops, others small puzzles and others have punishing side effects.
Loop after loop continues until some small next step in the storyline reveals itself. Scattered throughout the books, letters and photos in the house are hints at the bigger story. Before long, one of them pulls back a veil. Suddenly, some other pattern spanning rooms in the house becomes clear.
Once another layer reveals itself you’re back to more loops. The simple puzzles from the previous loop start to fade into the flow of each day. Having new things to search for keep the gameplay fresh and brings on a mild paranoia that every little detail might be hiding something.
The random nature of each run can definitely border on frustrating at times. Sometimes you need a certain set of items that just didn’t show up on that day. A lot of the negative reviews online seem to centre around getting bored of waiting for the right combination of rooms to appear in a given day. Keeping enough layers on the go at once is a good way to avoid things becoming stale and frustrating.
The game also does a good job of slowly nudging you towards unlocking more content. Playing long enough its clear that rooms and items aren't purely random. Some don't appear until later and then show up more as you've progressed further. This helps with keeping the game from feeling stale but isn't so obvious that the game feels like its on rails.
I’m certain that there’s a lot more to be discovered. At the same time I don’t know if I’m going to play through it to find it all. With games like these I find there’s a saturation point where unlocking more of the story is harder and harder to do. Despite that, this is a great game. It’s a well executed combination of puzzles put together in a fun shell.
